The NCAA’s Mock Selection exercise that allows journalists to select the NCAA Tournament field has been completed, and Sporting News’ Mike DeCourcy was among the dozen reporters participating in the process.

Each February, the NCAA offers reporters the chance of going through the process to help them understand just what the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee goes through on the weekend of Selection Sunday. It took the group over 12 hours over two days to complete the bracketing process.

DeCourcy said the new seeding rules announced in August made it far easier than to construct this bracket. In prior years, the Selection Committee had to adhere to rules that members of the same conference could not face each each other until the Elite Eight, unless a league had more than eight teams in the tournament (as the Big East did with 11 teams in the Dance in 2011).

Now, teams that are members of the same conference but play only once during the season will be permitted to meet each other as early as the tournament’s round of 32. Teams that play twice during the season—this includes conference tournament matches—can play as early as the round of 16.

So there's no more worries about constantly moving teams up or down a seed line to accommodate those rules. Since 2007, teams were being moved up or down seed lines an average of 10 times on a single bracket.

As DeCourcy noted on Twitter, it was difficult to find 68 quality teams to fill the field. If the tournament ever expanded to 96 teams, it may put us on a slippery slope to what the news satire siteThe Onion forecast five years ago. Thank goodness for 68.